iPhone 17e (apple.com)
227 points by meetpateltech 15 hours ago
Still holding onto my 13 mini. Dreaming of another small form factor release one of these announcements.. :'}
People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.
I dived into a niche world of small phones recently while looking for replacement to malfunctioning Pixel 4a (which is apparently now considered compact phone). There's a few small manufacturers in China making some, with 4 inch or 5 inch screen, like Aiphor or Unihertz. And by "small" I mean "they use kickstarter to fund their R&D" small.
Other than that... Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in the US or in the rest of the world. Bummer.
> Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in the US or in the rest of the world. Bummer.
And the worst thing is that app developers do not bother with testing their apps on small phones. So even if someone would produce small phone, many apps would be broken on that UI. So there's no way back.
PS 4 inch is not a small phone. iPhone 4S had 3.5" display and it wasn't small, it was normal. Small is something like 2" screen I suppose. All modern phones including these "iPhone Minis" are egregiously huge.
Former small phone person here: I went from a small iphone to a large one just to substitute not having to carry around my ipad. I really wish iphone fold is here sooner.
Funnily, the large display is the most important thing for me. I find my efficiency directly proportional to display size (which holds for laptops too).
If a 30 second task can be done in just 20 on a device with a larger display, that's absolutely worth it for me.
Also larger device tends to imply longer battery life too.
If the task can’t be done in a few taps I feel I’m better off opening a laptop anyways.
However the market agrees with you so I must be missing something. I used to think it was driven by media consumption on phones, and that I try to avoid, but this isn’t the first time I have heard people tout phone productivity gains from a slightly larger screen.
> I must be missing something
I wouldn't assume that.
The expression 'fat fingers' concerns the phenomena where users (including myself) lack the eyesight and finer motor skills required to type accurately on a small keyboard, so a slightly larger display makes all the difference.
Perhaps you simply have those fine motor skills (and good eye sight) so a larger device isn't necessary to prevent typos and remain productive.
At least for me, the effect is real, and is driven not by media consumption but ergonomics of use. But at the same time, I'd say you're not missing that much. I always preferred large screens because of productivity gains[2], but even as screens kept getting larger, the set of things that "I feel I’m better off opening a laptop" for remained the same for me.
That is, until I switched to a foldable phone (Galaxy Z Fold 7) half a year ago, and - I kid you not - I haven't used my personal laptop since that day.
FWIW, I still have a proper desktop PC; In the past decade+, I've been using a PC at home, and a "sidearm" on the go / away from home: always a 2-in-1 Windows laptop with top specs[0]. Being always with me, this laptop often replaced use of PC at home too, because of convenience & portability.
So by amount of productive use, for past 10+ years it was sidearm >> PC >> smartphone. But getting a foldable flipped it around. Having twice the screen size of a regular (large) phone is a big productivity win[1], but it's folding that makes the actual qualitative difference. Folded, the device becomes a regular smartphone - i.e. something that fits in my pocket, meaning it's always on me, in my hands, or less than 1 second away. Contrast that with tablets, whose form factor makes them basically just shitty laptops (same logistic as ultraportable, but toy OS of a phone).
I didn't expect this. I didn't even feel this change - I only noticed two months later that my laptop has been sitting unused on my desk, covered by a pile of stuff. Doing "laptop tasks" on a mobile device is still annoying (no keyboard, toy OS), but combining tablet-sized screen with portability of a phone makes them less annoying than logistics overhead of a laptop - and at least in my case, this eliminated the entire[3] space between "smartphone" and "PC".
--
[0] - Think Microsoft Surface, except I could get better specs at half the price if I bought an off-lease but pristine Dell or Lenovo.
[1] - It's not immediately obvious to people, but as things are today, a foldable phone isn't any better at media consumption than regular one, because almost all cinema, TV, videogames, etc. are all produced for widescreen - meanwhile, the inner screen of my Fold is approximately square, so e.g. for most TV, half or more of it is black at all times. However, all that extra space allows to effectively use multiple (3+) apps on screen, not to mention makes spreadsheets actually usable.
[2] - Bigger screen = less scrolling and tapping in menus, but also with text size scaled to minimum, my previous phone (S22) had a big enough screen that running two apps in split-screen became useful on a regular basis.
[3] - Well, almost. There are some tasks I really like physical keyboard and larger screen for - but for those, I just plug the phone into the screen via USB-C, and volia, it turns into a regular desktop. A shitty one, but good enough for occasional use.
My preferred conspiracy theory is that larger, brighter screens hold attention better, so everyone involved in the whole “user experience” (phone manufacturer, application developers, advertisers, etc.) prefers (whether they consciously realize it or not!) phones to have a larger screen. Smaller phones make fewer demands; who would want to make a device like that?
I believe you are correct.
I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection. My laptop has neither trait
> I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection
That's a bug, not a feature. You don't need to be able to do every task all the time. In fact, it's nice to be able to separate that aspect.
Yes I can just print out directions on Mapquest before I leave home, tell people to page me and I will call them back from the nearest pay phone, carry around my Walkman and my Polaroid camera with me.
Have you ever thought that with 80% of web traffic coming from mobile, you might be the outlier?
What next? The old Slashdot meme “I haven’t watched TV in 20 years. Do people still watch TV?”
I believe the GP was talking about trying to do “real work” on a phone, which is something many people try to do — but which many others find a repugnant idea, as they currently use the excuse of the impracticality of doing work on a phone as a lever to push back on letting work intrude on their personal life.
Have you thought that a lot people work remotely and don’t sit at their desk all day? I have deliverables and deadlines to meet like everyone else. But sometime I would rather go for a swim in the middle of the day in the heated pool when the sun is still out - benefit of living in Florida in the winter - and work late and be contactable (wearing my watch) or go to the gym during the day (downstairs). Business traveling is also a thing (much less than I use to), working with people in different time zones where I’m not going to refuse to answer a message from a coworker in India if they need me.
It’s a fair trade off. My company gives me a lot of leeway during the day and I am flexible about time zones.
Is this really a driving factor for people? If I anticipate tasks that I can't wait to get back to a good work environment to do, I'll bring my laptop and tether on my phone. It's a fantastically more productive setup than trying to ssh in via a phone keyboard or even write a long email. 1 inch extra on the phone screen diagonal won't move the needle there for me.
Yes and even though you haven’t watched TV in 20 years ((c) Slashdot) people still watch TV.
The feigned ignorance on HN that most normal people don’t pull their laptops out to do everything in 2026 is amazing
It's not feigned. I'm astonished to learn how hard people will work for the (seemingly to me) false convenience of doing things on their phone which would be (to me) much more straightforward to do on a more suitable device.
So I tend to assume that these stories are often the outliers, and that my personal experience is more common. I recognize the fallacy, and I suspect we're both wrong and we're both right. I just honestly don't know which one of us is more of which.
It probably devolves to a question of what kind of work we're talking about. The work that I do (or the way I do it), I do not believe could be done effectively on a phone or tablet, most of the time. I work with people whose work can be done there. And there are probably more of them that there are of me. But that does not mean I could become one of them.
(addressing your comment on another subthread): if music, camera, and web are a person's "work", then sure. But that does not resemble "work" for me in any way.
So it’s not feigned ignorance…
Again, you can look at the worldwide penetration of cell phones vs laptops, where most web traffic comes from, the amount of resources spent on mobile development vs desktop, the amount of revenue globally of phone sales vs PC sales, etc
I also don’t spend all day working and I definitely don’t take out my laptop when I’m not working
Worldwide is not relevant, and mobile-vs-desktop dev is not relevant.
Mobile-vs-web dev is probably a better metric. And developed, mature markets only. Anything else introduces the second- and third-generation tech gap inconsistencies.
Yes Japan and S. Korea who led in mobile penetration for decades are poor countries..
Are you really arguing in 2026 about time spent on mobile vs PCs?
This is non-responsive to my comments.
Also, you're being unnecessarily unpleasant in these threads; I wish I had read down further before replying initially, but I'm done now.
> Anything else introduces the second- and third-generation tech gap inconsistencies
This is completely responsive to your thread if you think countries that use their phones more than the US is some type of signal they are 3rd world countries.
It's not feigned ignorance, it's disbelief that people are comfortable working in such an inefficient and frankly unpleasant way.
Can I file my taxes on my phone? Probably. But I could also set myself on fire, and I think that might be more fun. Why would I not want to use a tool that is 100x faster and 1000x easier to use for any task more complex than writing a sentence?
I'm a developer. I've heard of developers SSH'ing from their phone and developing that way. It's impressive, in the same way removing all your fingernails is impressive.
Really? I did file my taxes by phone. It took me all of five minutes.
90% of taxpayers claim the deduction - meaning their taxes are really simple.
I launched TurboTax, it offered to download my and my wife’s W2s, I clicked through a few buttons on a wizard and I was done. It had all of my information from the prior year so it already knew my employer.
As far as speed, have you compared the speed of the fastest iPhone to a low to midrange x86 PC? The latest A series chips in the iPhone are faster in single core performance than an M1 MacBook Air which is no slouch. But all that is besides the point. How fast of a computer do you think you need to file taxes? There was tax filing software for the 1Mhz Apple //e in 1986. You just had to print it out.
I entered maybe one number?
I live in a state without state taxes so I didn’t even have to file states.
FWIW, I also shopped for, did all of the paperwork before closing, for the house we had built in 2016 from my phone.
The things that require more than a few taps to do aren't things that need to be done at a moment's notice. Those things can wait until I'm at my laptop.
Just Thursday, I left home at 6AM got in an uber, waited at the airport got on a plane for an hour and half , waited at another airport, got on another plane for four hours, uber to the Airbnb and while I was out to dinner that night, my wife and I were planning a trip we were taking during the summer.
Are you suggesting that o just queue everything up until I set my laptop up?
Again you realize you’re the odd one right with most activity these days taking place on mobile?
Is there anything you need to do during that time? Or are you looking to fill that time with whatever to keep you occupied and enjoy whatever?
If it's the former, you lead a very different life from me. There are very few things in my life that show up and require immediate action (or action within 24-ish hours for that matter. Most things can wait). If it's the latter, I try to fill that time with reading.
Again, are you so much in the HN bubble you don’t realize that most people don’t wait to get home to their laptop (if they even have a laptop) to get things done in 2026?
Is it really that hard to look at stats and realize that you might not be the normal one?
I'm sure they do it that way. I'm also not convinced there's any actual need to do it that way.
You also didn't answer my question. Nothing in your travel scenario there, if I were in your shoes, would need me to use my phone for more than a few taps per actual task, while the rest of my phone use would go to mindless browsing or reading. What specific tasks are you imagining popping up here that I would then queue to my laptop?
Have you ever thought that the HNs crowd superiority complex above the “commoners” and unwashed masses may be unwarranted?
And no I’m not a young guy - my first computer was in 1986 in 6th grade…
I'm not trying to say my way is superior. On the contrary, I'm asking what use cases you have that you are unable to solve. If you have a genuine need to send emails from your phone at a moment's notice, then I can't argue with that; if you can't wait to respond to the emails you receive, there's nothing else to really do about it. That's why I'm asking what needs you have. I'm trying to better understand your situation, trying to put myself in your shoes.
But if you have no desire to actually respond to my inquiry, I shall remain in the dark.
Yes you will if you think most communication personally or even work related is happening via email…
You know sending email via mobile has been popular since 2003 right?
> Yes you will if you think most communication personally or even work related is happening via email…
The same principles apply to Slack, Teams or whatever else you may use. I don't do work outside of work hours, so what would I know. Email was just the example I thought of in the moment. Again, I'm asking you a question out of a desire to better understand your situation.
Personal correspondence doesn't take many taps to do. It's rarely more than 25 characters at a time in my experience.
> You know sending email via mobile has been popular since 2003 right?
'sending' and 'popular' are doing some pretty heavy lifting here. Reading, sure, I'll buy that. Sending? I'm not sure sending emails longer than two sentences from any device without a keyboard has ever been popular, for values of. It's probably more popular than ever given that touch keyboards make it reasonably possible, but James S. Casual isn't sending a lot of emails from his phone just through the sheer power of not sending many emails to begin with.
And 'popular' for that matter. Possible, sure, but how many people ever even had a mobile device that could send email before the iPhone came out?
I'm sure sarcasm and implying I'm stupid are great ways to convince your interlocutor, or the unseen masses for that matter.
I’m not implying you are stupid. I’m saying straight out that you’re feigning ignorance (ie not that you are ignorant) and you know how the world works in 2026.
Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.
I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land. Even if not for work, do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages? Check HN?
Believe it or not, I'm not feigning ignorance. I just lead a very different life from you.
> Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.
> I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land.
See, I would never do this. A.) I don't work remotely (not out of a desire not to, but it's just not viable with my current line of work), and B.) If I did, that work would be zoned off away from my personal life. If there's downtime, I can kill time by browsing whatever, but I wouldn't be out and about but also 'at work' at the same time. Work-time and personal time basically never mix in my life, and I'd like to keep it that way.
If you're 'at work' for 48 hours at a time, while travelling, then having to respond instantly at any given time makes a lot more sense, although I'd probably still want to defer those responses until I can get some downtime during any given travels to then type up my responses on an actual keyboard. I can however understand if that's not really viable in your life of work.
> do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages?
I've never(?) sent a text message longer than maybe 100 characters. Most are a fair bit shorter than that, and I don't send that many to begin with. Same goes for Discord, although confirming that is harder, since it's contaminated with messaged written with an actual keyboard.
> Check HN?
To read? Sure. I even read books on my phone. Respond to a comment? Not unless my response is really short.
You're being pretty defensive / aggressive about what some might call a phone addiction.
Most on HN know the data: healthier people tend to enforce boundaries with their devices. The average person is addicted, yes, but I'm not sure being "the odd one" in an era of actually decreasing literacy and numeracy and attention span is the insult that you seem to think.
No I’m not living in some Luddite bubble. I am sure you’re also surprised that I’m not running Linux and using KDE Connect.
Again, look at the statistics..
The statistics suggest that being perpetually glued to a phone is negative for your life across essentially every dimension.
Yes I’m sure that using my phone for things that in the before times I would have used a desktop computer to do over a 2400 baud modem is a negative for my life. Those negatives are around social media
> while I was out to dinner that night, my wife and I were planning a trip
Were you out to dinner with your wife?
Yes, during our first night of our 45 day stay in another country and she got a text from someone she is meeting on the first leg of our trip during our summer 45 day domestic trip asking could we come 3 days earlier. We were looking at our calendar, our Hyatt points, flights etc. while enjoying live music and planning our next get away.
I’m sure you would have thought we should have waited to take out my laptop when we got back home.
Surely your laptop has a mic on it and probably a camera. It also has blueteeth, wifi and stuff. Your phone has much the same and can act as a proxy to whatever is missing on your laptop and vice versa. Obviously, getting your laptop to fit under or within your "lap" is a bit of an ask!
Things like KDE Connect provide a direct bridge and a bit of imagination does the rest.
If your laptop isn't cutting the mustard then ditch it ...
... Oh your phone has a tiny screen and a shit mic and speakers, unless you stick it in your ear?
Horses for courses.
Oddly enough, I don’t carry around my laptop in my pocket all of the time. You do realize that in 2026 most people do most of their day to day non work tasks on phones don’t you?
Yes most people use KDE Connect..
I don't understand why are you downvoted. Are people in this thread really pulling out a laptop and trying to get it connected (or pay for one with a cellular modem) every time they need to respond two words to an email, call a uber or look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?
HN seems to have some really weirdly prescriptive view of how people ought to use their devices in a way that is almost like Steve jobs.
> every time they need to respond two words to an email
I don't have my work email on my phone, and personal emails basically never need any actual response.
> call a uber
This is a few clicks and not a big ask regardless of the exact device. You can order an Uber regardless of screen size.
> look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?
Google Maps works fine on smaller screens. Ask me how I know.
And they probably are also surprised that I’m using an iPhone where I can’t use Docker and have JavaScript enabled on my browser.
What, ummm, efficiency benefits are you finding on a smart phone? Is it related directly to the keyboard size when typing? That's kind of all I can think of, other than a really tiny display + big fingers being an issue.
I find my efficiency directly proportional to the distance from my smart phone.
I'm typing this on an iPhone SE (2020).
It runs the latest iOS, although it's likely missing some of the new bits.
I prefer the size, although the screen that spans the entire front surface would be the superior device; I like the iPhone 13 Mini.
I switched from a pixel 3 to a pixel 9 pro over a year ago, and I still miss the smaller form factor. the pixel 3 really was the perfect size for me and I am sad I can no longer get a smallish phone with a high end processor.
I switched from Pixel 4a to Unihertz Max (5G phone with 5 inch screen from a small Chinese startup). Love the form factor, I can keep the phone in my front pants pocket again, next to my keys or wallet. I'm somewhat reluctant to put anything sensitive on that phone (like my email), but happy overall.
I still have my Pixel3. I use it without a SIM for random stuff, and miss the small form factor. It is half the thickness of a Pixel 10, my current phone!
I have found the iPhone Air much easier to hold than the iPhone 13 Pro it replaced because of how light it is, even though the iPhone Air has a bigger screen.
The 17e weighs roughly the same at a smaller size, and the mini weighs significantly less. Not to mention the first SE, compared to which even the mini is heavy. Yes the Air is lightweight compared to the Pro, but that’s a low bar.
The other thing with the Air is that you can’t really use it one-handed, which is what most people who like small phones are after, besides pockability.
The first SE was the best form factor I've ever owned.
Incredibly small. Incredibly light. Pretty thin, even in a case. Had a headphone jack, Lightning and Touch ID.
The only thing I like about the new iPhone designs is the action button. Having an automation which automatically turns silent mode off or on based on whether I'm home or not is pretty cool. You can't do that with a physical switch.
Agreed about the SE. I’m still depressed anytime I take it in hand that we don’t have something like it anymore.
The phones get larger and the UI gets less information dense every release. More padding, more offsets, more dead space.
Apple needs all that space so that the aesthetic can fit in.
I'd pay good money for a small phone with nothing but a unix terminal
Termux on Android. Lots of hardware choices.
Completely agree. And to make matters worse, I can't even switch to android without losing the ability to reliably send quality video to iPhone users.
Apple suffered for decades from Microsoft's anticompetitive OS monopoly, and turned around and did the same thing to the android ecosystem.
I have no idea why this sub is full of Apple fanboys. I was an Apple fan 10 years ago, but these days they no longer deserve your support.
> the ability to reliably send quality video to iPhone users.
Just curious but why? Is it iMessage lock in?
Yes exactly. RCS exists but unless an iPhone user goes and turns it on it won't work. Which means no one has it turned on.
We made fun of phablets, only for them to become the default.
well we have galaxy fold tablet-as-phone, so... maybe not all is lost?
I don’t think anyone should make fun of you for it but I’m in the opposite boat. I’m so glad that they make the pro max variants because most smartphones are so small that it hurts my fingers to bend them in the unnaturally inward way it requires to hold and interact with them.
For me it's not the fingers, it's the eyesight.
It wouldn't be so bad if both options were available. By all means, have your giant pro max or whatever if you want, but that shouldn't be the only reasonable option.
Boban Marjanovic posts on HN? Would never have guessed.
Great reference. It's a shame most people seeing this comment won't get it.
I just "upgraded" to a 13 mini last year, after being on the original SE for so long. Wrote a little post about it here:
https://blog.bschwind.com/2025/01/11/the-original-iphone-se-...
Yeah, I wish they would commit to doing a mini every x years. Last year I bought a 16 and this year I bought an Air. I returned both after just a few days. I can't reach across the phone with my thumb, meaning I can't use it one-handed.
The new phones have some neat tricks (satellite connectivity comes to mind), but the on-device AI seems pretty mediocre and I value pocketability and one-handed usability more than the new gizmos.
When I asked myself if I would rather keep the new Air or go back to my 13 mini with an extra thousand dollars in my pocket, it was no contest.
> I wish they would commit to doing a mini every x years
The problem is all the tooling is pipelined for annual releases. You can't just find a team to do the mini; it has to always be there, and parts of it have to always be working on the next one. Your vendors will get grumpy because it doesn't fit their product cycles.
This is true. But if they can afford it for the iPad Mini (my other favorite Apple product), then they should do it for the iPhone Mini.
an every-two-or-three year release cycle would be fine, ideal even
I have large hands but the 13 Mini is roughly the maximum I can use one-handed without doing the weird finger balancing act to shift the phone around. I get why most people like large phones - media consumption - but not everyone is into that.
I don't even mind large phones if they're done right. My favorite phone of all time is the BB Passport which you have to use two-handed, but it was actually designed around that and amazing to use.
Sorry but if that’s the case you definitely don’t have large hands. If you did you’d be able to use the Pro Max one handed and reach everything except the top left corner by swiveling your thumb (Reachability enables you to reach top left corner)
This depends entirely on how you hold your phone in your hand. For some positions, someone would need a 5” thumb to reach the corner. You can’t make such sweeping statements for something with such variation.
I've still got my 12 mini. Just got a new battery replacement too. Back in my day, phones were cooler if they were smaller.
I just eBay'd a 12 mini after my camera started getting blurry. There isn't a viable flagship replacement.
curious, did changing the battery make the phone faster under the latest OS?
If find that after the upgrade to the latest iOS my 13 mini has been struggling with framerate and just overall feeling laggy.
Liquid Glass has totally screwed up my 13 mini. Needing frequent soft reboots.
SE 3rd gen here as my daily driver. Small form factor and Touch ID. The perfect iPhone IMO.
Not looking forward to having to settle for those comically large phones with Face ID for my next one.
I "adapted" to losing the fingerprint reader.
Wow, it has a lot of unexpected downsides.
I've a lot of unexpected behavior from the faceid thing. Lots of unexpected swipe-ups that drop me out of an app and put me on the home screen. Can't unlock in the dark, too close to your face, off to the side, in your pocket. Lots of "I saw your face an unlocked" that I didn't know had happened.
fingerprint sensor unlocked when you wanted it to, with haptics. switching apps was a button operation, not happening when you didn't expect it.
Plus, fingerprint scanners can be activated without breaking eye contact with the person you're talking to. It's very anti-social technology.
It makes one look completely like a tool to pull out their iPhone and stare at it for ten seconds while checking out with a cashier. Deeply embarrassing and very annoying.
What are you talking about? It doesn’t cause swipes. It uses IR so it doesn’t need light. You don’t want it to unlock in your pocket.
These new Gemini shill-agents are not very compelling.
Me too, but I’m going to have to upgrade. The lack of storage on my phone (64GB) is killing me - every time there is an os update I have to delete almost everything to make room
I get that getting rid of touchid haptic eliminates dead space but still blows my mind they couldn't or refused to figure out screen-based touch id as an option at least. Samsung has it...
Under-screen fingerprint readers are definitely inferior - slower and less reliable. I (Android user) wish they'd revert to back-of-device readers, which were amazing.
(I also wish for smaller screens and no-adhesive battery swaps though, neither of which seems likely to happen.)
Same. Home button is sooo much better than swiping gestures
The physical home button is, no bullshit, one of the greatest pieces of UI ever. No, I am not kidding, I really think that. It’s crazy to me that they abandoned it, the gestures that replace its functionality are overall-worse and cluttering the gesture system with even more of them is bad for the overall UX.
Maybe you know this but it wasn't a physical button since i think iphone 7 - it was a haptic sensor.
The haptic sensor is almost as good as the physical button, and the trade off of not having to worry about it breaking (which was likely after a few years with the physical ones) is well worth it for me.
True, and in my opinion it was a worse experience than the previous physical one.
I'm also a touchID / iphone 8 size fan, but the nice cameras/zoom in flagship models are hard to give up. At least Face ID has improved significantly from the early days of iphone 10 -- it's faster and more reliable than it was on the older models if you tried it back then.
The thing I've come to like about FaceID on my 13 mini is that I can require it for certain apps to open that don't require it - e.g. messaging as opposed to banking which generally require some kind of auth by default - which is much better security in case someone snatches it out of my hand while it's unlocked. It's pretty seamless because I'm generally looking at the device anyway, and it's much less faff than it would be with TouchID.
I think the way the Pixel does it is strictly better across the board. The fingerprint sensor doesn't sacrifice screen space, and the platform offers face unlock as well.
I only wish Pixel retained the back fingerprint sensor. It was sooooo much better than even the current under-the-screen sensor.
Agreed - the rear fingerprint sensor on my Pixel 5 was far better than the blinding on-screen sensor on my new Pixel 9a.
I stuck with my 13 mini for a long time, and had recently put a new iFixit battery in it too. I did finally make the jump to a Pixel 10 but sign me up with everyone else who misses reasonably-sized phones.
It always surprises me that the mini was ~1% of sales and yet the pro mini comments get so many upvotes
It was 3-5%, if I remember the numbers correctly. There are rumors that the Air didn’t sell better.
I don't have any official numbers, but it sure seems like the Air is selling worse than the Plus which sold worse than the Mini.
(source: keeping an eye out on the NY subway, which I have found to be a pretty damned good gauge of consumer electronics popularity)
Also, the mini had worse cameras than the larger screens.
Camera quality is the second most important thing to me (after not needing finger enhancement surgery to hold the phone).
So, they designed it to fail, and it still was 3-5% of sales vs. ones that actually got good spec bumps every year. (If you’re upgrading the phone every 12 months, why buy the one with cameras a few years behind the curve?)
Anyway, I like my mini. I wish it had touch id instead.
The Minis had the exact same cameras as the non-Minis. The Pros had the only camera improvements. In my experience all were worse than the contemporary Pixels though.
You are misremembering. There was no issue with the cameras on the mini, unless you expected a Pro mini for some reason.
1% of iPhone sales is more people than live in most countries.
Yes but 99% of non mini users upvote other things
The release schedule was crap, as well as the 12 mini being an objectively bad phone.
Spring 2020, they released the iPhone SE 2020, 4 years after the previous iPhone SE. This satiated a lot of the demand for people holding out for a smaller phone. Then came the surprise with 12 mini in September of 2020, except the battery life and performance sucked, garnering bad reviews.
Then, finally in September 2021, they released the 13 mini, an objectively good, smaller phone. But over the previous 18 months, a lot of the buyers for the 13 mini had already bought the 2020 SE or were burned by the 12 mini.
> The release schedule was crap, as well as the 12 mini being an objectively bad phone.
I still use my 12 mini; it's by far my favorite iphone I've had since my 5s. It might have had sucky battery life but I was just happy to have a phone that could fit in my pocket.
I've replaced the screen twice, battery once (by myself) and I have really very little intentions on moving to anything newer than the 13 mini.
I'm not sure why Apple doesn't care about the mini apple users. My friends, when they pull out a 17 pro look absolutely ridiculous, constantly having to pull the phone out when doing any real work since the phone just keeps getting in the way.
Spring 2020, they released the iPhone SE 2020, 4 years after the previous iPhone SE. This satiated a lot of the demand for people holding out for a smaller phone.
Count me in this group. I wound up buying the 13 mini right before it was going to be discontinued because I knew that would be the last small phone they would produce and I'm keeping it until it dies (or I can't get a battery for it).
Crazy people fixate. It’s why you get people talking about how 4o was the best AI model ever and crying for it to be brought back. (It had no internal thinking process and would believe you are the messiah without question)
It's a good phone though. Also on the 13 mini and no desire to switch to a chunkier one.
i send them an iphone mini request every once in a while through the feedback form hoping it will make a little bit of difference: https://www.apple.com/feedback/
still holding on to iphone 13 mini hoping they bring back the perfect size. also trying very hard not to accidentally fat finger a ios 26 update.
You need a passcode to update. There's no way to fat-finger it.
Besides, you can always delete the update (if already downloaded) and turn automatic updates off.
Being the crazy person that spams the feedback form isn’t supporting the argument for a new mini.
If people wanted it, you wouldn’t be faking the feedback.
Same. Many developers are "desktop"-native for their work and reading-focused for their media, so they don't value the gauche pocket TV-era of phones.
I moved off the mini to get satelite messaging which I use while hiking. But now that T-Mobile/starlink support satelite on the 13 mini, maybe I’ll go back.
I showed my Costco membership QR code to the cashier the other day, and they suddenly exclaimed, “oh my! What a cute little phone!!”
It took me a second to even process why someone might say such a thing about my case-less generic 12 mini. Most of my close friends have 13 mini’s so I often feel my wife’s “regular” size iPhone is the odd one out.
That's a great phone for runners who need to carry their phone. Smaller, lighter, pocket friendly.
Have you replaced the battery? My 13 mini shows 90% battery health but I can’t use it for the full day (and I don’t game or anything, just light use). I wonder if the battery is really ok and it’s the software that is to blame.
I still have my 12 Mini, changed the battery in a Apple store a year ago (and they broke the screen in the process so got a new screen too) for I think 99 EUR, now the battery still last ~2 days, easily worth it. Maximum capacity says "87%" right now although I don't know what exactly that's based on.
I'm keeping this phone until either Apple releses a new mini or until Motorola released a GrapheneOS phone, whichever comes first.
> changed the battery in a Apple store a year ago (and they broke the screen in the process so got a new screen too)
Huh, I had a 12 mini and had the same thing happen at an independent repair shop I used to frequent. I've been pretty salty with the shop, but I guess it's an easier fuckup than I've been giving them credit for.
My 13 mini on iOS 26 shows 83% maximum capacity but makes it through the day with light-ish use (Spotify (although generally offline playlists because of lossless audio) NYT games, email, messaging, browsing, Instapaper). I do have lots of accessibility settings enabled to stop things like transparency and animations though. See my comment here for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45544554
I did! I ended up buying a kit off ifixit IIRC. It was super cheap and works great! If I did it again, I would splurge for the Apple verified battery as a third party one doesn't work with the new Battery app features.
Just replaced my 13 mini battery this past week which was at 80%. Noticeable improvement. I'm not a very heavy user but did find that I was getting to the 20/10% range at the end of most days. Now its 30/40 and I'm happy! Many more years in the old steed yet.
I got the base 13 at launch day whose battery health now states 86%. While I have noticed degraded battery performance, the stated health has been stuck at 86% for quite a while now.
I guess it's bugged out and would opt for a battery change if you're feeling the battery pains, I'm thinking of upgrading to the new base model this year for the usb c and 120hz display.
I’m down to 75% on my 13mini. I recently picked up a magsafe battery pack that gets me through the day when I’m traveling and can’t charge.
I was considering swapping out the phone battery but this is a better alternative for now.
13 mini user here. I have 86% battery health, and it is "okay". I need to charge it about once a day. Also holding out due to the smaller size.
Still loving mine as well. I held out with the 2016 SE for 8 years. Sadly it's looking like I might have to do that again with the 13 mini! It boggles my mind that Apple thinks it's worthwhile to sell the 16, 17, 17 Pro, and 17e all in basically the exact same form factor. And then the Air and Max in very similar form factors. Vary it up! I don't need a new mini every year, but something in the 5.4" form factor every 3-4 years would obviously have an audience. I don't care if it's a Pro or an SE/e model, I just need something that'll keep me on the latest iOS for security updates.
Sigh. Maybe the Clicks Communicator (at 13cm tall) will get my money.
Get an SE 3rd gen!
The SE3 is only half a year younger than the 13 mini the parent comment mentioned (and it’s larger and heavier than the mini), so I don’t really see the benefit there.
They'll pry mine from my cold dead hands!
(Until they release a new human hand sized phone at least)
Are there any androids with a similar form factor?
Ideally, degoogled android, of course. (Or even not android?)
The 13 mini probably still has a few years of security fixes coming, but after that, I’m going to consider jumping ship, and would like something that’s privacy respecting.
Finally moved on from my 12 mini, but I still have it sitting in my office and when I pick it up I think "wow this feels like a phone from the future."
Wish they made a new mini instead of the Air. A friend bought one of those, and frankly I just don't get it.
The screen is too big to use it one-handed, and thickness is really the only one of the three dimension of the phone that I don't care about how small it is (within reason). They probably spent billions of dollars shaving off half a millimeter and what do we get with that technology? Phone that's too big.
If this keeps up in another 5 years I'll be looking at flip phones and a separate camera.
I don't get Air either. My guess is that Air is just a stepping stone for a foldable iphone.
I think that's it exactly. Hopefully we're not looking forward to "phone that's too big, and unfolds to be even more too big."
I can see a large unfolded phone being desirable if it had a stylus and I could use it like a small notebook, but just as a "watch Netflix bigger for $2000" device, no.
Especially if it has the worst camera of all of the phone models like the Air does.
You'll want a replacement stylus 10-pak.
Somehow not a problem I have - still have my original 2018 iPad stylus, and I don't lose regular pens either.
Suspect this is a mindset thing if you mostly use 10 cent Bic pens you'll never care to make a habit of keeping them, and then when you're using an expensive gadget pen those habits carry over.
Even a pen that costs a few bucks (Signo UM-151 for instance) I know where they're at.
Same holding on the 13 mini, love the form factor.
My next upgrade if my 12 mini gives up will be an 13 mini. And from there I will probably just stick to refurbed 13 minis until a good alternative comes out.
I highly recommend hunting down a 13 mini now (with a lot of battery left) so you can switch when you have to. I did last summer and was glad I didn´t have to organize one on short notice. And if you avoid ios26 - make sure the ios18 on the device is updated because now you no longer get updated within ios18
I’m currently on iOS 16 with iPhone 12 mini. I don’t even see an option to update to anything but iOS26, so I’m staying put.
My worst fear is buying a 13mini that is already updated to IOS26, then I think I would be screwed.
Where are you finding refurb’ed 13 Minis? Apple only goes back to 14s now on store.apple.com in the U. S.
refurbed.com and swappie.com, I don't know if they do it on all phones but some of them get their battery changed to a fresh one aswell!
Hey man, this is great!
Thanks.
(I'm also looking to "refresh" my iPhone 13 mini)
FB marketplace and/or eBay.
Same. This would be an obvious upgrade for me, if the overall size was anywhere close to the Mini. Oddly enough, the announcement doesn't even list the screen size, but I'm sure it's 6" +
6.1" vs. 6.3" on the regular 17
It’s basically iPhone 14-sized.
Also still on my iPhone 12 mini. A new mini would be an instant buy for me :)
Same here, just replaced the battery.
Just upgraded from a 12 mini to a 13 mini with more storage. I intend for it to last another 5 years.
One can only hope... My 13 mini's performance, especially for the Camera and Safari seem to have hit new lows with iOS 26. I'm sticking with the mini for its size, but also its weight. So far the Air is the only alternative I think I could switch to, but apparently that's also on Apple's chopping block due to poor sales.
The 17e weighs only 4 grams more than the Air, would certainly be worth the smaller size for me.
Been thinking of doing the same. My 12 is showing its cycles, but it’s either I have a phone that lives in my front pocket, or I can go phone-less.
I refuse to have a phone I have to constantly carry, hold, or move from back pocket when I sit. This damn thing is in my hands enough, I don’t need to increase the surface area for potential distractions.
One of us!
If we could get a 13 mini sized phone with some better battery that would be great
Best phone I ever had, the 12 mini
Still rocking mine
You're holding it right.
I stupidly downgraded to a 17 from the 13 mini two-weeks ago and I hate it. It’s the first time I have been earnestly tempted to just get a dumb-phone and be done with it. The constant growth of mobile phones is perplexing to me but I don’t doubt Apple knows what sells.
Maybe the iPhone Fold won’t be two 8” slabs of glass glued together, I think that’s the only hope for those holding out for another Mini.
It will be even shorter than the mini, but also wider than the Pro Max. The aspect ratio is different from a normal iPhone. The weight should be in the Pro range, and of course it’ll be relatively thick. Not a mini replacement in my book.
That's true, some foldables like that exist. The problem for me is that I don't want to pay for the folding part, not interested in that.
Wow, I thought I was the only one.. or very few. Bring back small phones please
It's already starting to get slow too
my wife upgraded from a 13 mini to an Air and she loves it. She thought she hated the larger size of new phones, but after holding the Air in her hand she realized the weight and thickness was the issue for her!
It’s a tough call though because the Air has a lot of pros and cons! My wife never takes nature photography or macro photography, so she was OK with the 1 camera compromise.
If you truly want a shorter phone, my condolences lol. Apple seems to be ignoring this user segment.
for me it's the comfort/ability to put the thing in my pocket.
Market the thicclight pocketable without foldline "babysize" iPhone at the expense of ridiculing the fingertip unreachable "neanderthalsize" phablet.
I can relate. I actually used to be jealous of the ladies because they always have a convenient purse to put things in. These days I wear a light weight cross-body “sling” bag, and i’m happy as a peach.
Easy way to bring my phone, sunglasses, wallet, keys, etc with me. Pockets can be pretty annoying.
Maybe 2027 will be the year of the mini? :)
I tried the Air and went back to the mini because of the camera compromises. One big issue for me was losing Cinematic video, which I use all the time.
Now imagine an iPhone Mini Air. I'd be all over that, camera compromises or not.
I’m exactly there with you with my 13 mini and I did realize that it’s not gonna last as we really get into the era of local LLMs
Running deepseek 6B on the Private LLM app on the iPhone 13 basically set my phone on fire
Literally came here to write this
There are some models that everyone wants but companies discontinue or never make
iPhone 13s was the last one
Another example was the Cadiallac Ciel at Pebble Beach. Only ever appeared in Entourage after that.
I think the most valuable part of this “e” lineup is the in-house developed modem. The power and security benefits are probably enormous.
If the 17e had that chip, wouldn't it have Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6? It has neither of those.
From the press release:
> iPhone 17e also features C1X, the latest-generation cellular modem designed by Apple
But the 17e iPhone seems to lack the Apple developed N1 chip that provides Wifi 7 + Bluetooth 6. So presumably they're using off the shelf components for Wifi and Bluetooth in the 17e.
The modem chip (the C series) and the N series are two different chipsets.
For example, the 16e has the C1 modem but the standard Broadcom (or whoever) Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chipset.
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My mother still has an old iPhone because it fits her hand. They don't seem to get this anymore.
They releasee the iPhone 13 mini for all of the customers who wanted smaller phones
It sold very poorly. Despite all of the YouTubers and social media posts calling for smaller iPhones, the real demand for these is very small.
The older demographics generally prefer larger phones because they have larger screens, which are better for aging eyes.
It was cannibalized by iphone 12 mini and also se and older iphones still being sold by carriers. All that going on and it still sold millions of units. If it was any other phone manufacturer but apple they'd be happy with those numbers. In fact if it was apple 10 or 15 years ago they'd also probably be happy with those numbers.
You also have to understand the psychological profile of us "utilitarian" iphone users. We only get one when our hands are forced either hardware failure or forced software obsolescence. The iphone mini came to market and was discontinued all in the time I was still using my SE.
"If it was any other phone manufacturer but apple they'd be happy with those numbers"
That's what sucks about these huge dominant companies. They suppress interesting products because they don't reach the huge sales they need to make a difference to a trillion dollar company. And smaller companies can't compete against these behemoths.
So I've never gotten a satisfactory answer as to why there aren't interesting niche phones that don't sell a ton (anymore: android used to be full of them, that was half the point), but are enough for a small company to make consistent (but small) profits. People who want niche phones are a tiny fraction of the market....but the smartphone market is enormous. A tiny fraction seems like it should be able to sustain a few small companies.
My best guess is that the kind of person who would found a company capable of making such a phone won't do it because they know it doesn't have potential to make them fabulously wealthy (just regular old wealthy) because it's inherently limited in scale. And the big companies don't do it because, while such a line could be profitable, in the absence of competition, it's more profitable to force their consumers to buy the "main" line and not make another product line.
My guess is they are only able to make the phones cheap if it’s sold at huge scale. If you make some niche small phone, the price goes way up and doesn’t look attractive.
Then you have to deal with the fact that the people with obscure requirements have a million other requirements. The person asking for a small phone then complains it doesn’t have a headphone jack, and AV1 decoding, and 16gb memory, and an unlocked bootloader, and whatever else.
I can't believe Apple expected the 13 mini to be a hot seller; most people holding out for a small phone probably would have already bought the 12 mini just a year prior. The 13 mini was an incremental update -- basically just alleged camera improvements that I could not discern myself in a few minutes of testing.
As are most phone updates. If there was a market, it would have sold.
The 13 mini sold poorly because all of those same influencers just would not stop complaining that it had less battery life than a Max. I mean, of course the battery life wasn’t as good, because it was a smaller battery! But the people who want a mini aren’t influencers who need a phone that can go 18 hours without a break.
It was absolutely this manufactured “range anxiety” that killed it.
"Didn't sell very well" = "Sold better than most Android phones that year"
Smaller phones aren't great for older people because of the increased font size that they use. They can barely fit a sentence onto the screen.
Exactly, every older person I've seen has the Plus model (RIP) with screen text turned up to 150%. A small screen for someone with poor eyesight sounds like torture.
They also just two hand the phone. Left hand to hold and right hand free to tap any corner of the screen.
I'd love to have a smaller/cheaper phone but I continue to hold onto my Pro from a couple years ago is for the high end camera, particularly the telephoto lens.
No, I don't need it all the time.
But when you do need it, it's invaluable.
What I would like is a really good single camera. If that's even possible. One thing I find sort of irritating about the multi-camera setup on my iPhone is that using it as a magnifier is often frustrating. Get too close to something and it decides to switch cameras, which then means now you're actually looking at something else entirely. Maybe I'm missing a setting somewhere, I can't be the only person to notice how awkwardly the functionality is implemented.
The latest Xiaomi has this, they call it continuous optical zoom. It's the first time I've seen it on a phone camera.
If they added a lens lock option (like the AE lock) it would fix this problem nicely.
No, it sucks (16 Pro). I've had lots of issues reading QR codes.
I have the same issue with my Pixel. It's nice to be able to use a real zoom when I need it, but that means I can't get the one that's otherwise what I really need.
Waiting for the first pro line phone with both the Apple modem and Apple wifi/BT stack in it. Battery life is always a struggle when the phone gets older.
Exactly. I guess it’s time to replace my trusty iphone se 3rd gen. It’s been a great phone though, best one i ever had.
I'm happy for the existence of the e line mainly because it forces them to bump up the specs on the base iPhone. 17 is so good now that there's very little reason to get the 17 Pro.
Genuinely asking -- How about the camera? I keep hearing that camera is much better on 17 pro than 17 base.
The OP article keeps saying camera on 17e is 'stunning', but again, I am waiting to find out how it compares with 17 pro.
Yes, the baseline 17 has almost all of the features of previous Pro models.
Except 120 Hz display I believe, which is big reason for me
I'm glad they added MagSafe with this version, that was my biggest "issue" with the 16e. Thankfully you can add a ring to the back of the device to "give" it MagSafe (the magnets part at least, if not the faster charging).
Isn't it nice to have a USB-C port and then use the back panel inductive charging for this?
I don't see why I would want magsafe on my phone at this point.
$599 still feels like they're setting whatever price they can get away with. It's been 20 years, why don't we have sub $500 new iPhones yet?
Taking inflation into account, a $599 iPhone in 2026 would have been $380 in 2007. Given that the actual launch price in 2007 was $499, that's a pretty hefty drop.
A technology doodad getting 25% cheaper in real terms over 15-20 years is about as far opposite as you can get from a hefty price drop.
Sure, it hasn’t crashed like the prices of televisions, or like computers did in the 80s and 90s. But it’s still meaningfully cheaper and of course much more capable (the original iPhone didn’t even launch with an App Store!).
Come on, the iPhone had:
- no app store
- no video recording at all
- no copy/paste function
- no selfie camera
- no GPS
And then in terms of the specs on what it did have that got better, processor, memory, storage, screen quality, battery life, camera, it's all orders of magnitude better. There really is no comparison.
I mean look at the price of a digital camera, music player etc, hell even external battery pack in 2007, with the same specs as the iPhone today, and you'll easily find support for using the words 'hefty price drop'.
It's also 10000% more capable too.
Sure, but new computers are 100,000x more capable and 1/10th the cost. If we look back far enough, it's 1/100th the cost. We could do better.
And OP wants a model that's somewhat less than a 10000% improvement.
$499 with carrier subsidy too
It didn't take much longer to get a 3G for that price with no subsidy.
$900 is the new $600 </trump>
I’m pretty sure they determine the price upfront and then figure out what bells and whistles they can ship without eating into their margins. Their goal is to hit a certain average selling price across their massive user base when they upgrade their old phones. They are not going to jeopardize that by releasing an attractive cheap iPhone.
For the people who really don’t want to spend a lot, obviously the easiest option is to just buy an older iPhone or keep your phone for longer. My partner doesn’t care about having the latest tech. So first I use a phone for 3 years and then they use it for another 3 years. We essentially get 6 years of life out of it (Apple is good about releasing software updates for 6 years).
> feels like they're setting whatever price they can get away with.
This is just a free market for any product works. No?
Why do software engineers ask for six digit salaries? Because they can get away with it — someone is willing to pay for it.
It's a luxury brand. You don't sell cheap and risk losing the people that are happy to pay $1400 for a new iPhone.
It’s not a luxury brand, it is a quality brand. There is a difference.
> It’s not a luxury brand, it is a quality brand. There is a difference.
It’s an attainable luxury brand. There aren’t many products that a high school kid has in common with billionaires, superstar athletes and movie stars—the iPhone is such a product.
So is Mercedes-Benz. But they don't sell a $20,000 commuter car.
No, Mercedes Benz is definitely a luxury brand. They don’t want to sell to everyone. Apple (Steve Jobs) has explicitly stated that as one of their goals.
It’s not a quality brand, it is a luxury brand. There is a difference.
Oh but they do: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Automobile
>aimed at producing Smart-badged cars
The brand is "Smart".
Toyota is a quality brand, Mercedes is a luxury brand.
Mercedes-Benz sells commuter cars in Europe.
> The Mercedes-Benz A-Class is a car manufactured by German luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz
"luxury" is more of a marketing and product positioning term, it doesn't really have anything to do with engineering or quality practicalities
And this is the Mercedes-Benz commuter car I want to see more of.
The keyboard-doesn't-trigger-the-tapped-key-sometimes brand, just awestruck at their quality https://ios-countdown.win/
At least they increased the base storage to 256GB
There is no market for it in US at least since carriers control that selling couple year old iphones for free or close to it.
The iPhone SE was only $400.
I'd argue that is worth the money if you're going to be using a phone every single day of their life. People will drop a few hundred on fancy shoes and wear them once a month, but they treat phones as cheap commodities.
You asked for it. Now sit back and relish the ripe comments from fruitopologists.
Last time I complained about the pricing of the iPhone, people pointed out that inflation included the prices wasn't to far of from the original iPhone.
Still, I don't care that the phones are faster, have larger screens, better camera, FaceID, AI, are thinner light and what have you. The iPhone design peaked in 2015, from there they could just have release the same phone year after year, making it cheaper and cheaper and I'd still be happy with it.
The prices are, in my mind insane, and I'll be buying used, but those are also overpriced.
> Still, I don't care that the phones are faster, have larger screens, better camera, FaceID, AI, are thinner light and what have you. The iPhone design peaked in 2015, from there they could just have release the same phone year after year, making it cheaper and cheaper and I'd still be happy with it.
This obviously isnt relevant generally though, this is not how the general public feels at all.
No, they couldn’t, because then the company would stop existing due to lack of sales.
Bell System released about 10 models over 110 years, worked out just fine for them.
Yeah, because it had a government-sanctioned monopoly.
And now you see why they want to grow their services business so badly
The first SE in 2016, which wasn’t very far from flagship at the time, was only $399. It was a steal.
Accounting for inflation, that's $542. And considering how much everything, including phones, costs nowadays, $600 seems like a steal to me too. I was expecting a much higher price for what I'm seeing on that page.
Can mess up the price ladder!
Because they know people will pay it.
Global crazy tariffs, supply chain issues, and RAM and storage shortages due to AI hype betting. Also greed.
Keeping the "notch" so long after an alternative was released is a gesture of contempt towards their consumers.
A 60Hz display in 2026 is quite surprising.
I doubt the target market for the 17e would notice... or care.
It definitely is less important / visible to some people. I have a 175Hz screen at home and a 120Hz iPhone, but I use a 60Hz iPad and displays at work and if I am not focusing on it I simply do not notice the difference.
I guess they need something to differentiate it from the 17.
Of the differences, it's the one that would matter most to me.
I wonder if CarPlay will work on that, its still broadly broken on my 17.
give me a monochrome e paper android device, metal case, small like the 12 mini, week long battery life. k thanks bye
Because they can't sell that to you every year.
I really want to like the lower cost e phones, but the lack of ultrawide band support is a deal breaker. Does adding this feature really increase the cost, or is this a calculated move by Apple to ensure those who use this for air tags or keyless entry continue to buy higher end phones.
Probably both.
The conventional wisdom is Apple believes anyone for whom ultra wide-band is an important feature wouldn’t be interested in a bargain iPhone.
the only thing i search for on these announcements is phone width. bring back the mini
I learnt it the sad way that no one wants it except very very few people.
No. It doesn't sell. You so called mini buyers never showed up except in forums making a lot of pointless noise. If you understand anything about how businesses work you would understand how useless your comment is.
Seems like a decent deal for what it has and getting the full support lifecycle out of it instead of used. Does anyone know if this gets $50 off with the education discount?
Here in Canada, both the education pricing and regular pricing are at "From $899". So no edu discount.
I have an iPhone 13, would this phone be a worthy update?
If your phone is a problem for you, or is insufficient then any phone in your budget that fixes your problems is a worthy upgrade. Otherwise no phone is.
709 euro in Austria (828.89 us dollars), a 38% increase in price...
US prices don't include sales tax so 20% of that is VAT
Apple seems to be pushing for accessibility and volume. Cheaper phones, mac minis, and entry point mac that will be introduced on Wednesday.
Tbh, feels like the market is pushing for that and Apple is responding.
Sad it doesn't have the dynamic island, was going to pick up one of these for testing for iOS app development. Everything else looks fine however, as expected.
I would recommend the base 17 for that.
For just testing I'd rather just get a used 14, 15, or 16.
Or one of the older models? 15/16 have it too.
> and double the starting storage at 256GB
Is massive storage on a mobile device really still a thing that's important?
I'm saying this as someone with 512GB, but I just checked and I'm using 85GB at the moment, including the OS.
Photos and videos are the likely reason why the phones have so much storage, but these days both apple and google offer decent cloud backup solutions which negates the need for massive on-device storage. I'd rather the storage be smaller, and the savings going toward more battery or whatever.
Am I the only one?
Downloading videos to play without using data. For families on road trips.
Cloud storage do not help you sharing that old photo album with friends spending the night in a cabin far from the closest cell phone coverage.
Also, cloud service typically move your older stuff to colder/slower storage which are painfully slow to retrieve whenever you decides to do it. I realized this when browsing some old pictures before closing a google account I had not been using for years except emptying the gmail inbox every few months.
I personally prefer having a local copy of my files and syncthing them to my NAS at home (which is itself backuped in a storage in the cloud).
Both third party developers and Apple have increasingly become terrible at respecting the user’s disk space. Recently my iPhone started crashing as it ran out of space. I found that Apple Maps was using twenty gigs. Fortunately the fix is simple as the issue is widespread and it has become the first search result. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256084682?sortBy=rank
If you have 512GB I don’t think you really experience the worst of it. A lot of bugs are just Apple creating humongous temporary files before they are deleted as they age. Unless you check every day you don’t really know how much is really being used. You don’t really experience these crashes, and you have no skin in the game to make an informed comment.
I don't think it's inherently impossible, but Apple at least seems to do a really poor job at local cache management on iOS for Photos and Messages attachments. I am constantly amazed to find my non-tech-savvy relatives deleting stuff from their phones to free up local storage.
I've had at least 256GB on my phones for the last couple of generations after having had to deal with storage issues beforehand, and it's been much nicer.
But I picked up a 16e for my son a few months ago, with 128GB, and yes, we're running into issues with storage space when it comes time to do an OS update. Between local music and photos storage, base storage, and the image for the new update, two or three times now we've had to delete stuff temporarily in order to get the update going. So I'm happy the new base is 256GB, at least that will probably last us a couple more generations before ~~640KB~~ 256GB is enough for everyone.
Unfortunately yes. Some mobile games are 30+ GB (and this is probably the major reason for increasing minimum storage), high-res videos take any amount of space and are slow to sync with cloud, in-app downloaded data caches are routinely 2-5 GB each in addition to apps themselves.
If you've never used an iPhone near it's storage limit, I wouldn't wish it on you.
Performance nosedives, then it starts bootlooping randomly, and eventually you can't even delete stuff because there's no space to delete things.
You resort to randomly trying to remove apps, but sometimes that fails because of the stability issues.
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The only reason I replaced my 12 Pro was storage, and I made up my mind never to skimp on storage again.
That phone lasted me 5 years and could easily have gone several more, so I see it as an extremely cheap investment across the lifetime of the phone.
Cloud backups are great for keeping your photos long-term, but if you want those photos on your phone so you can show them to people or share them, you need to download them anyway.
I need storage because Honkai: Star Rail is 32gb and I like being able to have more than one game on my phone.
I know good network connectivity is not a privilege that everyone has, but on google photos I can scroll back all the way to 2007 when my digital photo collection started (I uploaded everything I had manually), and it's as if all those photos are local on my device.
Ironic that there are so many iPhones but such little diversity in the design. It went from "Think Different" to "Conformity & Comfort".
What do you mean? With every launch they change the orientation of the camera array so you can tell who has the new model, and thus, is a better person.
Why they don't mention that the phone is essentially a brick when new iOS will require handing over your ID?
It looks like the only changes are 256GB, OLED, MagSafe, A19 and C1X. Anything else of note?
16e has OLED, the new thing with the 17e screen is the ceramic coating on the glass.
Pink!
No mention of the amount of onboard RAM. (In this press release or in https://www.apple.com/iphone-17e/specs/.)
Going back to the 2007, Apple doesn’t reveal the amount of RAM for the iPhone in their marketing.
Occasionally there’s a feature that requires a minimum amount of RAM like Apple Intelligence but that’s the exception.
I don't blame them, consumers won't exactly follow the nuance of tracing garbage collectors and why iOS can get away with less ram vs Android
Assuming it has Apple INtelligence, 8 gigs seems plausible?
Every phone since the iPhone 15 Pro has the minimum 8GB to accommodate Apple Intelligence.
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So the LCD TouchID single camera Lightning iPhone is the same as the OLED ProMotion FaceID multi-camera + LIDAR UWB USB-C + MagSafe iPhone?
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Thought that was the entire point of the e line.
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Still no support for "actually owning your device." Disappointing.
Considering that no major phone or carrier has embraced that model why would you expect it to suddenly appear here?
Someone told me that this company "Thinks different".
Recently?
Thanks for saving me a click
The example photos are so bad it is laughable.
I'm trying to understand what you mean by this. Are you saying they're "bad" in terms of resolution, or artistic value, or something else? They seem good enough (far from "bad") by any definition I can think of.
I actually don’t want a smartphone anymore. The first iPhone was fun, the new one is creepy. I survived for many years without it, I think I can do it.
No Touch ID? Too bad.